For many years, people invited to traditional gift giving occasions such as weddings, bridal showers, baby showers or the like, purchased a gift in anticipation of the event. While many people chose gifts which they hoped would be well received and appreciated and would be of great use and benefit to the recipient, others elected to simply give gifts of money in various forms such as cash or checks. To the recipients, gifts of money may well have been the most practical and convenient gift and the most appreciated. However, gift givers often desire to give an actual gift rather than money. For most, there was a desire on the part of gift givers to provide a gift which would be individually cherished or at least appreciated and used for many years. Many gift givers preferred the personal touch of a purchased item. For these gift givers simply giving money often seemed impersonal and lacking in warmth or sentiment.
As a result of these feelings on the part of gift givers, the custom of giving specific gift items rather than money has continued through the years. Unfortunately, this well-intention custom has, in most instances, resulted in extensive redundancy of gifts received by the recipients. In a typical wedding of substantial size for example, the bride and groom may be overwhelmed with double, triple or even more redundant gifts of common items such as appliances, decor items such as pictures or mirrors or aesthetic items such as pottery, statuary or flower vases. Similarly, kitchen items such as flatware, cooking utensils or dishes experience substantial duplication in most wedding situations. Other occasions such as bridal showers, baby showers and birthdays experience similar duplication of gifts due to the tendency of gift givers to generally think along common lines of thought in selecting a gift for the recipient.
The consequences of all this uniformed but well intentioned gift giving are often vexing and stressful for the gift recipients. The recipients are left with the task of choosing that which is to be kept and that which is to be returned. This task is often daunting and is made even more difficult due to the very real possibility of creating offense to those whose gifts are returned rather than kept. As a result, the problems associated with such gift giving situations has, for the most part, continued.
Through the years, retailers have provided a marvelous solution to this problem by creating a system known as “gift registration”. The gift registration system was simple enough in that potential gift recipients (such as the bride and groom at a wedding) went to a prominent retailer and “pre-shopped” a wish list of desired gifts. The retailer then compiled a gift list under the recipient's names. Typically, the list comprised products to be purchased from the retailer directly and thus included the retailers purchase prices for the various items. This allowed gift givers to select a gift of a desired cost. In addition, the retailer “tracked” gift purchases and deleted gifts from the list or marked them as “purchased” as gift givers bought the various listed items. This tracking by the retailer and indication to the potential purchaser or gift giver avoided much of the redundancy of gift giving which had previously occurred.
The gift registry system proved to be a substantial benefit to all parties. The system made selection easier for gift givers and did indeed avoid most gift redundancies. In addition, the gift registry system virtually guaranteed substantial sales by the retailer providing the gift registration.
With the advent of the internet and the rise of so-called “online” purchasing, the gift registration system readily adapted to the new purchasing power of online purchasers. Under the revised gift registration system, the retailer continued to maintain the gift registration list and track gift purchases as previously provided. However instead of requiring a trip to the retailer's store, the list was now available on the retailer's website and could be readily accessed by persons going online. Additionally, purchases being carried forward as online purchases was substantial convenience to the gift purchasers. While the newer online gift registry systems have proven to be convenient, the many practical advantageous and conveniences of money gifting have yet to be provided.
In addition to gift registry, many retailers and other entities such as shopping malls or the like have for many years have provided systems of gift certificates. In these systems, gift givers simply purchase gift certificates in a selected cash amount. The resulting purchased gift certificates are given to the gift givers in a tangible form which is then given personally to the gift recipients at the particular occasion. The recipients use the gift certificates much like temporary credit cards or cash to purchase gifts from the issuing retailer or shopping mall. This system has many of the advantages of money gifting. However, such gift certificates must usually be redeemed, at least initially, at the issuer's facility. In addition, gift certificates are often not adequately protected against loss or theft. Thus, despite their advantages, gift certificates have been proven to be subject to several limitations.
In the face of the limitations and deficiencies of the above-described gifting systems, there remains nonetheless a continuing and unresolved need in the art for gifting systems which exploit the overwhelming convenience and practicality of money gifting while providing the joys of more personal touch gift giving and feelings of participation of item gifting to the gift givers in a secure and protected process.